


Eternal Sunshine

by jewel_h



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergent, Canonical major character death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Beta, he comes back to life lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25855375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewel_h/pseuds/jewel_h
Summary: “Even in death, Kakashi is just as beautiful as the day Iruka met him, way back when Iruka was still a naive young thing vying for any sort of attention and validation from a world that was reluctant to give it.”Set during the Destruction of Konoha, Iruka finds Kakashi’s dead body.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 15
Kudos: 105





	Eternal Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody!  
> This is my first time ever posting one of my works online and I welcome all comments, kudos, and critiques.  
> “Eternal Sunshine” was brought to you by COVID-19 and the lovely American Airlines flight attendant who kept me stocked on coffee & stroopwafels while I was writing this on my flight back to university.  
> Thank you for reading!

Iruka notices Chōza Akimichi first. His large body is limp and unmoving at the base of a huge pile of rubble. Iruka quickly takes a knee next to the respected clan head and prepares to perform emergency first aid, when he notices a second person.

There, on top of the rubble, beautiful body mangled between rocks and broken buildings, is Kakashi. His head is tilted forward and his neck is bent at a sharp angle towards his chest; congealed blood falls in slow, thick clots from his forehead. The sour smell of iron is pungent, suffocating, and overwhelming as it permeates each of Iruka’s senses. He suddenly feels sick—the contents of his stomach threatening to spill through clenched teeth—but he forces himself to stand. He urges his legs to move, one in front of the other, shamefully abandoning Chōza in favor of Kakashi. Iruka finds himself unable to care as he forces his shaking body up the small mountain of debris before dropping to his knees at the summit next to Kakashi.

Swallowing the hard lump in his throat, Iruka cups his hand and places a trembling palm to Kakashi’s cold forehead. Slowly, Iruka begins pushing Kakashi’s soft grey locks out of his eyes. He barely has time to register the now-gelatinous sanguine fluid steadily seeping between his fingers, staining them dark red, when suddenly—

Kakashi’s head falls back, rolling briefly between his stiff shoulder blades, cloth-covered face bared to the sky. Both of his eyes are open, half-lidded as usual, but a thin film covers each one, dulling the life that Iruka is used to seeing from them. Sick, Iruka removes his blood-covered hand from Kakashi’s forehead and instead wiggles his fingers in front of Kakashi’s lifeless eyes. “Kakashi,” he whispers, searching the jounin’s face for movement. He scrutinizes Kakashi’s forehead, his eyelashes, even his masked mouth for something, anything that could prove that Kakashi was alive and that this was just a cruel joke somebody was playing on him.

He puts his palm on Kakashi’s cloth-covered cheek, decorating the dark blue material with another bloody stain. “Honey, stop messing around. Naruto needs your help right now.” His voice cracks, and he feels the hot tears well up in his eyes before they spill from between his lashes. Iruka sniffles and hooks his fingers around the seam of Kakashi’s mask where the cloth ends and pale skin begins. He gently pulls the fabric down, down, down until it pools statically around his jaw. Iruka bites his lip and suppresses the agonized moan building in his throat. Even in death, Kakashi is just as beautiful as the day Iruka met him, way back when Iruka was still a naive young thing vying for any sort of attention and validation from a world that was reluctant to give it.

***

_Iruka could not believe his eyes. There, laying just in front of him on the day of his graduation from the Academy, was a real-life ANBU. He blinked slowly, completely caught off guard. Nobody was ever at the Memorial Stone at this hour, much less an elite member of Konoha’s Black Ops._

_Brushing away his initial shock, Iruka took a tentative step forward. His original intentions had been to visit the Stone to excitedly inform his parents of his recent graduation, but now his interest had been piqued. Setting aside the small slip of chakra paper that documented his official release from the Academy, Iruka firmly decided that talking to his parents could wait a little bit longer. He inched ahead, stopping about ten feet away from the ANBU._

_The ANBU, upon closer inspection, appeared to be completely asleep at the base of the Stone. He was small-bodied—his official ANBU uniform hung loosely off of his frame, almost as if he hadn’t quite grown into it yet. Even his mask seemed too thick and heavy for his body. Iruka reached his hand out and scratched his nails softly against the mask’s painted surface. Then, impulsively and full of childish curiosity, he snatched the mask right off of the unsuspecting ANBU’s face._

_Immediately, the ANBU’s eyes shot open and he lashed out, sending Iruka flying across the memorial site. Iruka landed hard on his side on the cobblestone_ _pathway, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs. He crossed his arms over his eyes in a frantic attempt to defend himself and starkly noticed a small stream of blood trickling steadily from the inside of his elbow. “I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!” Iruka yelled pointedly in the direction of the ANBU. “I’m a Konoha shinobi too! Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?” He brought his arms down and opened his mouth to say more, but the words died on his tongue._

 _The ANBU was a young boy, probably only just older than Iruka. Untamed, silver hair framed his cloth-covered face, still boyishly chubby from youth. They made eye contact, orrather, Iruka made eye contact with one cold, piercing_ _grey eye; the other was mysteriously hidden underneath an official Konoha headband, the same one Iruka had just earned. They sat quietly, stuck in a tense staring contest. Iruka gradually lost his fear in the long stretch of awkward silence, quietly noting that the ANBU he had just disturbed looked terrified. He was crouched at the foot of the stone, his hands cautiously primed in the basic jutsu position, breath coming in fast, deep huffs. His visible right eye was decorated with a thick dark circle and he kept glancing anxiously at the ceramic mask that had fallen between them, almost as if he’d rather be anywhere else in the world other than in front of Iruka._

_“ANBU-san,” Iruka started to say, but the boy cut him off._

_“Hound,” the ANBU corrected him. His voice sounded strained, a soft tenor that betrayed his age._

_Iruka blinked, then corrected himself. “Hound-san,” he said, raising his hands slowly above his head in a dignified but clear display of nonresistance. “I’m sorry for taking off your mask. I won’t tell anybody I saw anything.”_

_The ANBU—no, Hound-san—had moved silently towards Iruka, bent over, and placed the mask back on his face. He said nothing as he quickly formed the hand signs for a shunshin and disappeared, but Iruka understood the trust that filled the silence. He retrieved his chakra paper, spoke briefly to his parents, and walked home._

_He kept his promise and had never uttered a word to anybody about that night. Every so often he would see Hound-san out of his ANBU uniform slinking around the village and would offer a smile whenever they crossed paths. Many times Hound-san would not smile back, but sometimes he would. They never spoke, but on several occasions Iruka had seen Hound-san walking around the village with the Third Hokage. One day, years later, as he was being assigned a mission with the very ANBU he shouldn’t know about, Iruka overheard Lord Third call Hound-san, Kakashi.  
_

_***_

The memory hits Iruka like a punch in the gut. He stares down at Kakashi, but the person in his arms doesn’t look like Kakashi anymore. This Kakashi looks so different from the Kakashi who flirted shyly with Iruka at the mission desk, so different from the Kakashi who asked Iruka on ramen dates even though he hated salty food because he knew that Iruka loved it, so different from the Kakashi that honed Naruto’s skills when Iruka couldn’t, so different from the Kakashi who had coaxed Iruka’s heart open piece by piece, so different from the Kakashi who had finally confronted Iruka about their relationship (“it’s not really just for Naruto’s sake anymore, is it sensei?”). Iruka swallowed heavily, he couldn’t look at Kakashi’s eyes anymore, so he gently closed them.

A piercing, agonized wail fills the air around him, and as Iruka clutches at Kakashi’s face, he realizes that the sound is coming from him. He lets his tears fall freely, huge, racking sobs coursing through his body as he cradles his cold lover’s torso in his arms. He shouts Kakashi’s name over and over again, but his voice sounds far away, like it is coming from somebody else. Iruka only registers the possibility of the enemy discovering his location when he hears rubble move behind him, but he can’t bring himself to care. _Go ahead and kill me_ , he thinks. _I don’t want to live anymore, anyway_.

But it’s not the enemy. It’s not one of the Shinobi with the Rinnegan. It’s Sakura. And Choji. Iruka doesn’t acknowledge them. He holds Kakashi tighter. He’s still wailing. _Fuck the twenty-fifth rule_. He’s still screaming. _It hurts. Everything hurts_. His heart hurts.

Sakura is reaching towards him, saying something. Iruka doesn’t hear it. She’s moving towards Kakashi, she’s trying to take Kakashi away from him. No. No, no, no! He frantically pulls Kakashi’s mask back up over his face, smoothing the cloth firmly over his nose—after all, even in death Kakashi deserves his privacy.

Sakura reaches for Iruka, probably in an attempt to uncurl his fingers from Kakashi’s face. He bites her hand, sinking his teeth hard into the meat of her palm until she shrieks and steps back. Iruka notices tears in her eyes as she rubs her other hand over the teethmarks. “Iruka-sensei!” she shouts, her voice wobbly. “I loved him too, but there’s nothing we can do!” She steps forward again but Iruka shies away, a new wave of hysteria crashing over him. This wasn’t how Kakashi was supposed to die. There is no way that Konoha’s infamous Copy Ninja, that Kakashi. Fucking. Hatake. was supposed to die like this, completely undignified and buried in rubble.

“You don’t love him like I do!” Iruka shouts, and then something sharp hits the back of his thigh. The quick pain stuns him into silence and he turns to look at the offending object: acylindrical glass dart filled with the telltale gold liquid of a Konoha sedative. He stares at the dart stupidly as the serum quickly empties into his thigh. He instantly feels woozy, iron-grip loosening from Kakashi’s mask as he falls forward. Choji must have snuck up behind him while he was arguing with Sakura.

The last thing Iruka registers before falling asleep is Sakura bursting into tears.

***

Iruka wakes up sprawled on his side in the dirt. His mouth is dry and the skin on his face is tight with salt. Slowly, he rolls over onto his back. It’s a gorgeous day: the sky is a brilliant shade of blue and the sun is warm on his brown skin. He closes his eyes again and, for a few blissful seconds, Iruka’s mind is blank as he basks in the afternoon sun.

But, inevitably, he remembers. He remembers Kakashi’s cold body, his limp torso, the blood… oh god the blood. Iruka squeezes his eyes shut with a despondent moan at the memory but he has no more tears left to cry. There is a mild pain in his thigh—probably from the sedative—so he focuses on the slight throb before opening his eyes again. His head tilts to the right andhe watches as Sakura tends to a now-responsive Chōza. He can’t help but feel proud of her—she’s come a long way from being the cute, little know-it-all he taught at the Academy.

Taking a breath, Iruka turns his head to the left.

They had pulled Kakashi out of the rubble and laid him flat on his back next to Iruka. The tears Iruka thought had dried up suddenly come rushing back but nothing audible accompanies them. Iruka is not stupid enough to believe that Kakashi’s death is his fault, but a stab of guilt worms its way through his gut anyway. Kakashi had saved Iruka’s life and had died as a result of the ensuing battle, that much he was sure of. He sniffs and turns his face back towards the sky…

…and sees lights.

There must be a thousand of them shooting through the sky like blue meteors crashing down to earth. Iruka blinks and briefly wonders if the sedative Choji had used was still messing with his head before gasping and shooting upright. “Are those… chakra signatures?!”

If the commotion coming from the direction of Sakura’s makeshift team is to be believed, Iruka’s assumption is right. He wipes his eyes and nose dry on his sleeve and focuses on the mass above him.

He recognizes a few of the signatures above him as students’ parents, local shopkeepers,or friends from the mission desk, and he quirks an eyebrow in frustration. It isn’t until one of the signatures stops in mid-air above him that he realizes what is happening. Iruka watches, mouth agape, as the signature hurtles down to earth and lands squarely on Kakashi’s chest.

Kakashi’s eyes fly open and he sits up faster than Iruka has ever seen him move. His ribcage moves up and down violently as he tries to catch his breath and fresh blood falls down his cheeks from the Sharingan. Kakashi quickly plasters his palm over the Sharingan and turns to face Iruka, who has resumed crying. “Iruka?”

Iruka throws his arms around Kakashi’s neck and wails. He kisses Kakashi’s cheeks, his temples, his exposed eye, and his cloth-covered mouth. When he finally pulls back to look at Kakashi’s face—animated and rosy—he has Kakashi’s blood all over his cheeks.

Initially, Kakashi looks dazed and a little confused, but then he cracks a smile that Iruka can see even through the mask. “Iruka,” he says brightly, his visible eye curved into a sweet little half-moon.

“My father sends his regards!”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!  
> I was inspired to post this (my first fic) after reading some lovely Kakairu fics by RenGoneMad, jessicamiriamdrew, decaf_kitty, and gloomier. Their stories give me a means of escape from the stress of life during a pandemic, and I hope this story can give you the same feeling. :)  
> Be like Kakashi & wear your mask! Stay safe! <3


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